‘Suicide’ Russian was murdered
EXILED Russian businessman Nikolai Glushkov was murdered at his London home, Scotland Yard revealed yesterday.
It is believed mystery assassins strangled the prominent Kremlin critic and tried to make it look like he had hanged himself.
The body of the 68-year-old was found by his daughter on Monday at his home in New Malden, south west London.
Fugitives
A pathologist has now established the cause of death as “compression to the neck”, the Yard said yesterday.
Counter-terrorism command officers are investigating the killing.
But a spokesman stressed there was nothing to link it with the nerve agent attack on former spy Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, in Salisbury on March 4.
The Daily Express revealed on Thursday how Mr Glushkov topped a list of 22 UK-based Russian exiles who the Kremlin describe as “fugitives from justice”.
His murder comes a year after he was sentenced to jail in Russia in his absence over claims he swindled £87million while working as a director for the Russian airline Aeroflot.
In January 2015 Russian prosecutors had sent a formal request to Britain for Mr Glushkov to be arrested and extradited.
But lawyers advising the then Home Secretary Theresa May concluded the businessman had no case to answer and the request was dismissed.
The airline then pursued the case in London but Glushkov failed to show up at court in central London on Monday. His body was discovered that evening.
He was a friend of the late Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky, 67, who was discovered dead at his home in